To provide universal access to quality Early Childhood Development services to all children in the province.

To provide support services that enhances the functionality and effectiveness of Basic Education.

Core functions

Public Ordinary Schools: is aimed at the provision of educators in schools, the development of educators to ensure that they are equipped to provide the best quality teaching and the provision of Learner Teacher Support Materials (LTSM).

Public Special Schools Education includes the provision of schooling to all learners with special educational needs in special schools and full-service schools.

Early Childhood Development is the provision of Grade R in state, private and community centres. The programme also seeks to provide ECD programmes for pre-Grade R learners.

Programme budgets for 2015-16

A department's programmes are the activities that it spends money on during the financial year. Different programmes have different expenditure budgets, depending on their requirements and available finances. More detail on the programmes is available in the department's Estimates of Provincial Expenditure documents.

Planned compared to historical expenditure

Budgeted and actual expenditure/allocations for a department can increase or decrease from year to year. Changes in expenditure for a department can be because of changes in the activities of the department, because of changes in priorities between departments, because of cost efficiencies or because of increases in the price of goods and services due to inflation.

The chart shows the department’s actual expenditure for past years, and budgeted expenditure for the current year and the upcoming three years of the medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF). By adjusting these numbers to take inflation into account, it is possible to determine if a department’s expenditure is really increasing or decreasing in real terms, as compared to the rest of the economy.